MMA - The Ultimate Fighter Episode 6 Recap

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MMA: The Ultimate Fighter Episode 6 Recap

Last week's episode was filled with some drama and the season's first finish as Ramsey Nijem submitted Charlie Rader with a rear naked choke to give Team Dos Santos a commanding 3-1 lead in the game.

This week's show started off where last week ended, with Brock Lesnar chewing his team out for their apparent lack of effort in the cage. Of course, Team Lesnar drama captain Len Bentley decided the words were too hurtful and he stormed out of the locker room mid-talk. The other members of Team Lesnar seemed to appreciate their coach's honesty and understood they really had no option but to leave everything they had in the cage from now on.

The fight announcement for this week came as Junior Dos Santos chose Mick Bowman from his team to square off against Clay Harvison of Team Lesnar. Both men are seen mainly as strikers so the fight shaped up to be an exciting one.

For the third or fourth time this season, Team Dos Santos' wrestling coach Lew Polley overstepped his boundaries in training again by coaching over Dos Santos during some boxing work. This prompted Dos Santos to explain his frustration with his assistant coach in broken English: "Lew... Lew come here to coach wrestling, only wrestling. But Lew think he teach boxing... and jiu-jitsu... and everything. I think it's called Team Dos Santos for a reason." All of this was said with a big smile and it still amazes me how he's one of the nicest fighters I've ever seen outside the cage, even with a bad assistant coach constantly overstepping his dutie,s Dos Santos is somehow polite when criticizing or trying to be sarcastic. It'll be interesting to see how much more Dos Santos lets Polley get away with.

Team Lesnar's training session once again took the path toward drama as another fighter complained about teammate Chris Cope watching everyone else a little too closely. There's been no evidence of Cope passing information to Team Dos Santos, but none of his teammates seem to trust him. In the house's Zen garden, someone thought it would be funny to write "Chris Cope double agent" in the sand. Cope didn't find the joke funny and he immediately started pointing fingers at his own teammates, but nobody came forward. After a lot of anger and name calling with a mix of some hurt feelings, it turned out the message was written by Mick Bowman of Team Dos Santos, and that somehow BOTH teams consider Cope sneaky and someone you can't trust. I'm thinking Cope won't be using these guys as job references in the future.

Round 1 started off with immediate action as both fighters looked comfortable and aggressive right off the bat. After taking a couple shots, Bowman shot for a takedown but got denied and had Harvison wind up in guard. Once on the mat, Bowman immediately went for a triangle and an omoplata, but was shrugged off by Harvison. The fighters got back to their feet and Harvison went right back to landing solid combinations as Bowman started to look overwhelmed. The two met against the cage and clinched for a while, both struggling to gain position. The round ended with Bowman starting to look more comfortable striking as he started to gain momentum before the bell.

The second round began just like the first, with Harvison landing solid strikes and forcing Bowman into backing up and running rather than moving and countering. The fighters clinched against the cage for what seemed like forever until Bowman landed a good shot while separating. At that point in the fight, Harvison looked absolutely gassed as Bowman once again started finding his range and connecting with more frequency. With two minutes left, both men threw tired punches with no real damage being inflicted, and another one of Bowman's takedown attempts was denied as the second round ended.

The judges' scorecards came in, and Harvison won by decision. Sounded like good news for Lesnar and his team until Harvison told his coaches that one of his fingers was broken. When his gloves were taken off, you could literally see the bone on the underside of his pinky was sticking through the skin. Nasty. Team Lesnar finally got a win, and his fighter ended up with a compound fracture in his finger and he's going to have to go home. Either way, Team Lesnar pulls the contest to within 3-2 on the season and will control next week's fight matchup.